San Francisco Ballet executive director to retire after ’19 season
A man who saw his first cultural performance at the age of 7, then rose to oversee the nation’s oldest professional ballet company, is retiring.
Glenn McCoy, 60, will step down from the San Francisco Ballet’s executive director position next June, after the end of the 2019 season, the ballet announced Tuesday evening. He has been with company since 1987 and held the top job for 16 years, a span that included the recessionary years of 2007-2009.
The news comes as the ballet has just completed its “best year financially” since its founding in 1933, said Carl F. Pascarella, the chairman of the board of trustees.
McCoy’s longtime counterpart, artistic director Helgi Tomasson, praised his colleague’s efforts on the business side that left him free to concentrate on the troupe’s artistry.
“His talent for financial and operational management has enabled me to focus on the company’s repertory and provided the freedom to implement my artistic vision for the ballet,” Tomasson said in a statement.
McCoy himself has been a longtime devotee of the arts — ever since his childhood in the South. In a 2017 interview with the San Francisco Business Journal, he credited the National Endowment for the Arts with opening his eyes to a new world.
“The NEA was created for 7-year-old Glenn growing up in rural North Carolina,” he said. “The first thing I ever saw, and I still remember the program, was when I was in fourth grade and I went to see the North Carolina Symphony perform. It changed my life.”
And the arts still have the power to change lives, he said.
“I don’t know in my lifetime when there’s been a time when you need more in your life that expresses humanity, empathy and creativity.”
Before joining the ballet in 1987, McCoy worked in marketing positions for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and the San Francisco Opera. He started as company manager, then moved up to general manager and managing director. The board named him executive director in 2002.
Over his tenure, McCoy has overseen more than 130 ballets — both new repertory ones and full-length productions — as well as more than 50 domestic and international tours, the ballet said.
He manages an annual budget of about $50 million, with approximately half of that coming from ticket revenue, he said in the Business Journal article. Each year the ballet draws about $4.5 million from its $100 million endowment; tuition and contributions supplement those sources.
The company, legendary for being the first in the
United States to produce a full “Nutcracker” in 1944, embarked on a reworking of the ballet 60 years later. Despite the $3.5 million price tag, McCoy told the Contra Costa Times in 2004 that he saw it as a worthwhile investment for the ballet, since they fully expected the new production to last — and pay for itself — over the following 15-plus years.
Both Pascarella and Tomasson on Tuesday thanked McCoy for agreeing to stay on for a transitional period while the company searches for a replacement.
“At least we have these next nine months to work together as we prepare for our touring engagements to Washington, D.C., and New York in the fall, the 2018 Nutcracker performances, our very exciting 2019 season, and preliminary planning for 2020,” Tomasson said.